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“We talk to community managers all the time and we ask ‘What’s the thing you didn’t think was going to be part of your role? What’s the one component you were surprised how much time you were spending on it?’ It’s almost always evangelism and coaching,” said Jim Storer, principal and cofounder of The Community Roundtable, during a webinar earlier this month cohosted with community platform provider Higher Logic. Storer’s colleague and TheCR cofounder Rachel Happe added that the organization created a working group on the role of “becoming an internal consultant,” just to help TheCR members excel in that role.

TheCR report also notes that “best-in-class” online communities are more often managed by a staff team, rather than by a single person.

“Given what we now know about the complexity of—and potential for—sustained and productive engagement, the notion that a lone community manager can address all the strategic, operational, and tactical responsibilities is quickly fading,” the report states. “Implementing many of the processes and programs that are markers of maturity generally requires more resources, and best-in-class communities with bigger teams are able to prioritize community programming, advocacy programs, community management training, and other key community elements.”

AMA sessions are the jewel in Reddit's crown. The interviews are conducted with individuals and groups from all walks of life, from presidents, to pop stars, to people with two penises, and act as a carrot to attract people who might otherwise by put off by the site's insular in-jokes and questionable subcultures. Without Taylor to act as a buffer, sifting through questions and writing up replies as they were originally stated, it's easy to imagine AMAs in which PR teams can cherry-pick questions and mete out bland responses.

AMA sessions are the jewel in Reddit's crown. The interviews are conducted with individuals and groups from all walks of life, from presidents, to pop stars, to people with two penises, and act as a carrot to attract people who might otherwise by put off by the site's insular in-jokes and questionable subcultures. Without Taylor to act as a buffer, sifting through questions and writing up replies as they were originally stated, it's easy to imagine AMAs in which PR teams can cherry-pick questions and mete out bland responses. AMAs done right make notable figures appear personable; done badly, they can shred a public image.

ong-running feeling among their number that Reddit does not value their work or communicate effectively.

1. Launch the work.

2. Examine the data. 

Combined ignorance does not create a powerful plan.

Use Your Towards Maturity Learning Landscape Audit to find out:Your staff's preferences for different types of learning resources or modes of deliveryTheir willingness to use their own technologies and to share their learning with othersHow actively they are using social media and apps in their day-to-day life and workWhat formal learning they are involved with - both inside and outside workTheir views on working online - what works, what doesn’t work, what they find most helpful and what gets in the wayA comparison of the key findings for different groups of staff – managers, job roles, age, experience, location and othersWhen is it useful to conduct a Learning Landscape Audit?When designing new learning and performance solutionsWhen you are setting strategy and agreeing long term business plansWhen allocating resourcesWhen making the business case for changeWhen you need to set a benchmark prior to introducing change

People who fetishize leadership sometimes find themselves longing for crisis.

Our faith in the value of leadership is durable—it survives, again and again, our disappointment with actual leaders.

f you’re flexible in how you translate the word “leadership,” you’ll find that people have been thinking about it for a very long time.

Drucker’s solutions for fragmented executives—reserve large blocks of time on your calendar, don’t answer the phone, and return calls in short bursts once or twice a day—sound remarkably like the ones offered up by today’s time- and information-management experts.2

Add to these challenges a torrent of e-mail, huge volumes of other information, and an expanding variety of means—from the ever-present telephone to blogs, tweets, and social networks—through which executives can connect with their organizations and customers, and you have a recipe for exhaustion. Many senior executives literally have two overlapping workdays: the one that is formally programmed in their diaries and the one “before, after, and in-between,” when they disjointedly attempt to grab spare moments with their laptops or smart phones, multitasking in a vain effort to keep pace with the information flowing toward them.

First, multitasking is a terrible coping mechanism.

The relevance for leadership? Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and their lesser cousins have proved the power of the platform. They have shown that if your average 21st century citizen is given the tools to connect and the freedom to create, they will do so with enthusiasm, and often with an originality that blindsides the so-called creative industries.  The result is a growing awareness from those who think about business structures for a living, that good leadership is no longer about ‘taking charge’ or imposing a strategic vision but about creating the platforms that allow others to flourish and create. By way of example, Frederic Laloux – the organisational theorist currently developing a cult-like following across the world – offers a telling story about his meeting with Jos de Blok. De Blok is the founder and CEO of Buurtzorg, a Dutch nursing care firm that has grown from four to 9,000 employees in nine years, by devolving all decision-making down to small teams of nurses across the country. It’s a structure that leaves only 45 people working in central administration and management but has delivered huge gains in the efficiency and impact of nursing care in The Netherlands.

Like social media networks, their job is to create the frameworks that let others take decisions and make change.

It’s what being a leader in this new world is all about: helping others to generate change on their own terms rather than taking on the role of sole changemaker yourself.

We can’t just buy iPads (or any device), add water, and hope that strategy will usher schools to the leading edge of 21st century education. Technology, by itself, isn’t curative. Human agency shapes the path.

The social and economic world of today and tomorrow require people who can critically and creatively work in teams to solve problems.

All computing devices — from laptops to tablets to smartphones — are dismantling knowledge silos